


VERBERATIONES CONTINV ABVNT DVM ANIMVS MELIOR FIT (the beatings will continue until morale improves)

by Merricat_Blackwood



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Gentle Kissing, Hurt/Comfort, Post-TLJ, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-11-26 11:27:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20929457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merricat_Blackwood/pseuds/Merricat_Blackwood
Summary: "There was no cure in those sacred texts for a broken heart or a shattered dream. And maybe this wasn't a cure either … but it was an impulse she wasn't going to shake." In which Rey takes a page from Kylo Ren's playbook, and he's none too happy about it.





	1. desperate

The room smells of blood.

Blood, and smoke, and sweat, and the pungent bitterness of scorched flesh. Rey draws a ragged breath and then another, the sound ripping through the silence of the room, echoing off the cold gray walls of her quarters. Lifeless, this place seems to her now, more sterile and empty than even Jakku. If she steps outside her door, she know she will find warmth and light, kindness and companionship … which is exactly why she doesn't step out. She needs to be alone, with the familiar, dull loneliness of solitude. It's different than the loneliness she feels when she's surrounded by her friends and allies. 

She needs privacy for practical reasons, as well. First she toes off her boots, aching feet nudging them under her cot. She moves slowly, every motion a trial, a push against the pain that presses at her, trying to claw its way deeper than the skin ... or maybe it's on the inside trying to tear its way out; she can hardly feel the difference anymore. Feet bare, she lets the frigid floor soothe her toes, and takes off her belt, tossing it and her weapons – blaster and lightsaber – aside. They land on the cot with a muffled thump, but she couldn't have cared less where they landed.

It takes great effort for her to bend enough to step out of her pants; she bites her lip, tears springing to her eyes at the cry of her muscles, her cuts and bruises and burns. The pants puddle on the floor and, without thinking, she kicks them aside as she usually would. Her side goes up in a scream of pain but she only gasps, then chomps down on her lip harder, squeezes her eyes shut. She will not cry. She will not cry. She will not …

The worst she saves for last. Her tunic, once white, is now yellow and brown with smoke and blood. Most of the blood is not her own, but enough of it is. Some time has passed since the battle and the fabric has stiffened with dirt and caked blood, and it doesn't want to peel free from Rey's skin, especially not on her left side, just above her hip. It was there that the blaster bolt had struck her, the shot unclean, drawing a welter of blood, charring her living flesh and nearly bringing her to her knees. But she hadn't gone to her knees. And she hadn't died.

The First Order officer had, though, the one who'd gotten off the shot on her. She'd rushed upon him and cut him down: instinctive, her sense of self-preservation kicking in late. Rey still fights like the Jakku scavenger she is … Jedi or not, she will always be that Jakku scavenger, the girl nobody wanted …

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she snarls, her voice low and hateful. She has no right to self-pity. They'd won the battle, captured a First Order base, freed hundreds of stormtroopers from indoctrination … Finn was debriefing them now. Everyone else was thrilled at the victory.

Rey had hidden her wounds and forced a smile. She should have been thrilled too, and hated herself because she was not. But for her, the victory had rung hollow. 

She knows why. She knows that Leia feels it too. She knows that Leia wanted to talk to her more, about what was missing, and Rey knows that Leia deserves the whole truth. But she can't give it to her, not yet. Maybe not ever. For Rey, talking about him, even thinking about him, is like beating on an open wound.

_Beating on a wound … _

Dark thoughts bloom like poison flowers in her mind. When he had done that, on Starkiller Base, she had hated him. She wishes that she could hate him again. But all she can see is soft brown eyes, staring up at her: devastated, pitiful, pleading …

_No._ She bites her lip again and takes hold of her ruined tunic, knowing it will do her no good to be gentle. The pain will come no matter what, and she had better get it over with. Gritting her teeth against the softness of her lower lip, Rey rips the cloth from her wounded flesh.

A scream dies choking in the back of her throat as she throws her head back, her vision blurring with tears she no longer has any control over. Doubled over in a burst of agony, she is barely aware of anything around her, can hardly remain standing … but somehow she does, coming back to herself shaking like a leaf, clinging to the side of the cot, her tunic hanging off her neck like a noose. She ducks out of it, better able to move through the pain that now goes on and on and on. Her useless clothing, nothing but a bloody rag now, lands on the floor with the rest, while the pain throbs insistently from her scorched side. Wearing only her breast-band and underwear, Rey staggers to the table beside the cot, fingers fumbling for her medkit. It's seen more use and been restocked more times in the past months than she cares to think about, but this is the worst she's been hurt since she joined the Resistance.

In all that time, she has not seen the doctor for anything more than routine physicals, and she refuses to start now. She needs her pain to be a private thing, needs to keep her weakness to herself. She is a Jedi now; the whole Resistance looks to her, the whole galaxy looks to her to save them. How can she let them down by letting them know she's only human after all? (Finn knows better of course, and Rose, but they don't know what makes her withdraw, and there are only so many times she can say _I'm fine_ before they learn to stop asking so often).

She can't let them down. So she hides her injuries and treats them herself in the cold silence of her little gray cell of a room, and until now, that has always worked out.

Another wave of pain overtakes her as she closes her fingers around the plasticky case of the medkit, and she curses as it flies from her hands, landing on the floor with a bang, lid falling open and spilling bacta patches and bandages all across the floor, in the mess of rags that used to be her clothes. The sob that escapes Rey is one of mingled pain and a frustration so deep it borders on rage. Her inability to keep hold of the medkit snarls up together with her other mistakes, with what she has failed to do: to save so many lives. To end the war. To find the source of the gathering darkness she can sense but never see clearly. To master her abilities in the Force. To accept the truth about her parents.

To save Ben Solo.

The pain is growing too much to bear – not the physical pain, she still stubbornly insists she can bear that – but his face flashes up before her eyes again and this time she doesn't see him as she saw him last, on his knees on the floor of an abandoned base. She sees him with his features softened, bathed in firelight, a sheen of tears glossy in his eyes as he told her she was not alone. She saw the clarity, the conviction on his face in the moments after Snoke's death, the promise in his eyes … and then that wild, unreasoning expression just before he opened his mouth and ruined everything.

Pain runs wild through Rey's body and soul. She slumps, pressing the palm of her hand against the hideous red and black burn like she can somehow hold the hurt back. She can't, of course, and at the touch of her hand the hurt grows so white-hot and intense it takes her breath away. All she can feel mingling with the tidal wave of the pain is … anger.

Anger, so intense that for a moment it drowns out everything else and narrows her focus. She has to get rid of these soft, weak feelings. He had not chosen her and he never would. Where she had once seen a future, now there was only darkness. If the war went on she would have to meet the Supreme Leader in battle, and when she did she could not afford to be harboring this … this softness, this longing, this …

_… love … _

And if only darkness would drown it out, then she would take the darkness. In this moment, she would have tried almost anything.

At some point she has ended up sitting on the edge of her cot, back straight because the wound did not allow for slouching. It's good that she's sitting down. If she loses consciousness because of what she is about to do, at least she'll fall onto the bed rather than the floor. In her heart she knows that what she is going to do is wrong, that it is not the Jedi way and no one she knows, no one who cares for her would approve. But there is a dark place, between the cracks in her spirit, a shadow in her heart where she has stopped caring. Because she's been breaking her back trying to be the perfect little Jedi for months, and maybe it's working for everyone else but it is _not_ working for her.

There is no cure in those sacred texts for a broken heart or a shattered dream. And maybe this isn't a cure either … but it's an impulse she's not going to shake.

Rey braces herself. She takes a breath and then she makes a fist, and she drives that fist as hard as she can into her own wound.

There had been pain before, but it paled at this. This was a pain to drive all other pain to its knees. Rey does, for a few seconds, lose consciousness. When she opens her eyes she sees blurred lights above her, the lights of her room but multiplied and spinning around her head. The cot is a strange softness beneath her and the pain that throbs from her side and radiates outward seems to encompass her whole body. Delirious, exquisite. She forgets everything else. Wild tears run unimpeded down her dirty cheeks, and her stinging eyes make more tears. They come without much noise or fuss; she can barely even hear her own shallow, sobbing breath over the sound of the blood rushing in her ears.

But all too soon, the pain recedes. Oh, she is still very much in pain, still very much aware of her wound, but it is not _enough_, not the intense, focused blaze of burning agony that had, for just a moment, razed all thoughts of Ben Solo from her mind.

_Again,_ a cold, clear voice says in her mind. It isn't the voice of her usual thoughts, but she's too far gone to question it, far past the point of rational analysis. She needs to do it again. Again and again, as many times as it takes for the lesson to stick, for the pain to make her stronger.

Her spirit is willing, but her flesh is weak. Rey clasps one fist around the other to try and still their shaking, give some purpose back to her hands. She tries twice to sit back up, without success, but on the third try she manages. The air of the room feels frigid, searing her lungs with its cold. There's red on her hands and she doesn't know or really care where it came from. A bright warmth of hurting in her side … she's happy it hurts. Her vision goes in and out of focus, blurring and doubling the pile of clothes and medical supplies on the gray floor.

_Again,_ that insistent voice speaks in her mind. So cold, so clear, so commanding. She must not fail. She has failed at so many things; this she must master. She must master herself, her sentiment, her pain, her fear. She must _do it … _

So she takes her fist and slams it into her side again.

This time when her vision goes white, then black, then white again, she pitches forward, crumpling in on herself like a folding blade. Somehow she stops herself from falling off the edge of the bed, not even because she cares but some instinct makes it happen. It's while she's like that, bent double and insensible to everything but her pain and its fading high, that a tug through the Force happens and then there's a presence and then there's a voice: quiet, deep, raw. Familiar.

_Ben … _

“Rey … what the hell are you doing?”

\- 


	2. connected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Don't you recognize a lesson you taught me?"

It's like her efforts to exorcise him have summoned him to her instead. Or maybe it's just the will of the Force. Whatever the cause, after months of loneliness and silence, he's here … just in time to see her low and vulnerable and desperate enough to dip into darkness.

Shame flushes her with heat and when that's gone she's freezing and reminded that she's half-naked in addition to everything else. This would normally fluster her beyond belief; she would have scrambled to cover herself … but now, in the wash of pain and turmoil, it's only a footnote of indignity. It's not the reason she can barely face him. But face him she must.

Her eyes blur and sting and flood at the sight of Ben Solo, taking up too much space in her tiny room, a hulk of black against the gray walls, wearing that stupid cape and those stupid gloves and a look of panic on his stupid face that she has spent so many nights tracing the memory of in her mind. His eyes are huge and dark and frightened. Frightened for _her_.

“What are you doing?” he repeats, voice breaking slightly on the last word. He takes a half-step toward her, and she flinches back, defensive: afraid not of him, but that if she lets him close, she will be unable to let go. This exercise that was supposed to make her stronger has only weakened her further, and invited him back into her life to witness her weakness. The pain that crosses his face at the same time the wound-pain rips through her body makes her rage resurface, though.

“Don't you recognize a lesson you taught me?” she says, her voice faint but harsh. She tilts her head back to glare at him, really an effort to steady her unfocused vision. “It's what you did, on Starkiller.”

His expression darkens, his mouth begins to tremble … but then his jaw suddenly, unexpectedly sets. This is conviction, a look she has so rarely seen him wear. But even in her hurt and anger, she has to admit that he wears it well.

“Don't be ridiculous,” he says in a voice low and dark. “I failed on Starkiller.”

“Why are you the only one allowed to be ridiculous? Besides, _I _won't fail,” she mumbles, only half-aware of what she's saying. Her voice seems to be slipping in and out just like her eyesight, or maybe it's her hearing that's slipping. What does it matter? She bundles up her fist, sticky with fresh blood – _fresh blood,_ _where did that come from_ – and her vision clears in time to see Ben's face wracked with horror, and he closes the distance between them and grabs her bloody fist in both of his gloved ones.

“_Stop_,” he commands, and his voice seems full of the weight of the Force, like he's right. And he holds her fast and she can do nothing. “Rey, stop it. You're better than this.” A quiver comes into his voice, he can't keep his emotions buried, but his strength doesn't falter. With her free hand, Rey tries to push him, but she doesn't have the energy and her fingers, stained with her own blood, just splay across his chest, digging uselessly into the thick black textured fabric of his tunic. She stares at her hand in confusion, like it belongs to someone else.

_I thought I was nothing, _she tries to say, only it doesn't come out. But he hears her anyway. Guilt twists his features.

“Don't …” He shakes his head. “Don't change the subject. You're bleeding, you should have seen a doctor for this ...”

“No doctors,” Rey chokes out, fingers catching and clawing at Ben's tunic. “Promise me, no doctors.”

She thinks for a moment that he will refuse her, but he doesn't. She watches a decision being made, she sees it in his eyes. “Lie back,” he tells her with a quiet authority, pushing her toward the mattress. “Let me stop the bleeding.”

She is beginning to understand that the damage she has done to herself on that dark impulse has exacerbated the damage she'd already sustained. She knows now that it was a mistake. _How did he survive this, how did he bear it, and he had no one to care for him like he's caring for me … _

Gravity does most of the work in getting Rey to lie down. The pillow feels preternaturally soft and she's still lightheaded, unable to make sense of things.

“Bite down on this,” Ben says roughly, and something leathery and warm is eased into her mouth; one of his gloves, she realizes. She's able to see that he now has a sterile gauze pad in his hand, though she never saw him pick it up. His free hand, no longer gloved, reaches out to cradle the side of her face and she lets him, leans into his touch, craving his human warmth, his shaking fingers. _Ben …_

“This is going to hurt,” he tells her, the truth the only harshness in his tone.

She tries to mumble some acknowledgment but it's muffled around the glove. His hand leaves her face – leaves her cold – and he takes the sterile pad, and both his hands, and all his strength, and presses down on the wound in her side.

Her screams are smothered by the glove in her mouth. But she doesn't scream for long, because she passes out, falling falling _falling_ into the deep velvet black of unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the love, guys <3


	3. awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She prays that he won't vanish, even as she knows she should wish he would.

Something has changed.

When Rey wakes, instead of being consumed in blinding agony, she's wrapped up in a dark warmth. Her hands catch in the heavy fabric covering her, which smells like battlefield smoke and something else, something more human and more comforting. The pain makes its presence felt a moment later, but it's like a distant cousin of the pain she'd felt before; tears come up behind her closed eyelids, but do not fall. It takes several moments for her to place where she is, but well-known stimuli come to her senses soon enough: the flat cool of the pillow beneath her cheek, the freezing filtered air, a rogue light buzzing intermittently above her head that keeps breaking no matter how many times she keeps fixing it … She's in her little room on the Resistance flagship. Her surroundings haven't altered, but she has, even if she can't yet remember exactly how.

But she remembers …

“Ben,” she tries to say, her voice barely even a whisper. She starts to try and sit up but her body resists and she subsides, foiled. A thoughtless, wild panic grips her, stealing her breath. She reaches out with one hand, fumbling out of the fabric covering her, reaching, seeking …

Another hand – bigger, warmer – takes hers and enfolds it, ceasing her restless searching. Strong fingers soothe over her cold and trembling ones.

_He's still here. He's real. _

But if he's really here, if that really happened, then so did everything else … all of it now coming back to Rey in flashes of mingled, muddied shame and horror. What had she done to herself? Her eyes fly open, stinging, hardly seeing …

Even kneeling by her bed, Ben manages to loom, a warm shadow blotting out the flickering light. “Shh,” he says, a soft murmur. He still holds her hand, his thumb stroking over her knuckles. She wants to see him properly, but she can't get her eyes to focus. “Be still.” His free hand reaches out and she feels him smooth the snarled, sweaty hair out of her face, his fingertips grazing her skin … how can she be so completely unsettled and so wholly comforted in the same moment? How could he tear her world apart and then mend it with a touch?

She isn't entirely mended though. The wound is still a wound, and her whole body aches; it just doesn't concern her as much as it did before. He concerns her more. 

“How ...” She tries to speak, but her throat and lips are too dry. Ben lets go of her, to her dismay, but he reappears a moment later with her canteen, eases a hand behind her head, fingers weaving lightly through the tangles of her hair, holds the canteen to her lips. She tastes the cool of the metal and the trickle of the tepid water. It's not about the taste, though, and Rey drinks gratefully as long as Ben allows it. When he takes the water away, her thirst is slaked enough for now.

She realizes that he's still cradling her head, that she's resting against his chest, her body moved by his breathing as much as her own. She should pull away, he should let go … but neither of them does. Without words, they both know this is more right than being apart.

Rey opens her eyes fully, now better able to withstand the light, and focuses on Ben's face. He looks down at her like there is nothing else but her in the galaxy; his eyes glisten, his throat works. She wonders if she looks as bad as she feels. The darkness pooling over her chest and stomach and legs, that battlefield-scented fabric, she sees now is his cape. He must have laid it over her after …

“How long was I asleep?” she asks, her voice thin and thready. Part of her hates how weak she sounds, but she wants to believe she can be weak with him … and besides, does she really have a choice?

“You weren't asleep,” he tells her quietly, his fingers carding through her hair, brushing her scalp, the base of her skull, and she shivers. “You were unconscious.”

Rey groans, pressing her face into his chest for a moment. “You know what I meant.” She hopes for a smile to grace his lips, wonders what he would like smiling, but he's as solemn as she's ever seen him.

“For about an hour. I dressed your wound.” He bites his lower lip. “You're lucky you don't have internal injuries.” A hint of heat, of anger creeps into his voice, and Rey feels heat rise in her in response to it.

“I don't need a lecture from you.” She wants the words to come out harsh, but her voice is as quiet and raspy as before. Still, she sees her statement leave a mark on him. He flushes, color blooming across his cheeks and neck and ears.

“You need medical attention,” he mutters.

“Oh, right, I'm sure you go running to the medbay on your Star Destroyer every time you get a bump or a bruise,” Rey says, still quiet but deeply sarcastic. She tries to sit up straight, and Ben helps her to do so even as he's arguing with her, tucking his cape back around her shoulders.

“This isn't a minor injury, Rey. Whatever happened ...”

“What happened,” she says acidly, “is that one of your men shot me.”

He flinches. His hand on her back trembles. It's not like he doesn't deserve that particular slap but Rey regrets it anyway, because it didn't make her feel any better. His cape slips off her shoulder again and puddles in her lip, and she shivers as the chill air hits her exposed skin … she's still only wearing her undergarments and a layer of dirt. She avoids looking at Ben, glancing down at her wound instead, finding it covered by a large bacta patch. The skin around it, breaking out in a fine purple bruise, has been cleaned meticulously. The pain is still very much present, but duller now, no longer all-consuming.

“And you thought it wise to exacerbate the injury instead of treating it?” He sounds incredulous, like he can't understand her at all. Why should he be surprised, when this was a choice he made for himself?

“I wasn't being wise,” Rey says, lifting tired eyes to Ben's deeply sorrowful ones. “I was desperate.”

And then she knows he understands.

Comprehension crosses his face like a cloud. He has been desperate too, and made terrible mistakes because of it. Rey knows that she made a mistake. It wasn't the Jedi way, what she'd done, but more importantly, it was not _her_ way. She had betrayed herself for a whisper of darkness, and that hurts worse than the wound itself ever could.

The man beside her is probably the only one who can understand: what she did, why she did it … if only she could make him understand why it didn't work, will never work.

He looks at her like she will disappear if he takes his eyes off her. She looks back at him the same way, praying he won't vanish, even though she knows she should wish he would.

“Rey ...” he starts to say, voice soft and low and warm. She's on edge, leaning toward him, waiting to hear what he has to say …

There's a knock at her door.

“Rey?” Finn's voice is muffled through the door, but his concern is unmistakable. “Rey, are you doing okay? Can I come in?”

Rey and Ben are both frozen, but Rey recovers first. She claps a hand over Ben's mouth, not allowing herself to be distracted by the feel of his lips against her palm or the heat of his breath or the look of shock on his face.

“I'm all right, Finn,” she calls, hoping fervently that he can't hear the wavering of her voice, or that he'll just take it for exhaustion if he does. _He didn't see me get shot, nobody did except the one who shot me, and he's dead … _“Or I will be, after some rest. I just … I just need to be alone for a while.”

A pause. A moment of fear that he will see through her, that he will not accept this. And maybe he does see through her, but Finn also respects her right to lie.

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.” Ben has been statue-still but now his lips move restlessly against Rey's palm, and her cheeks burn, but he stays quiet. “Thank you for checking up on me, Finn.”

“You bet. I'll check on you again a bit later, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks again.”

“No problem. Get some rest, Rey.”

They wait for the sound of Finn's footsteps to retreat. Rey holds her breath until she's sure he's gone. Finally she takes her hand off Ben's mouth to find him scowling at her.

“You didn't have to do that,” he mutters. “You didn't have to muzzle me.”

“I panicked,” she explains. “I was afraid ...”

“You were afraid your real friends would find out about your connection to me.” His voice is sharp, because he's hurt … though not surprised.

Rey flushes. It's ridiculous that she should apologize to him but a “Sorry” rises to her lips all the same. He just keeps looking at her with sad luminous eyes, and doesn't say whatever it was he was going to say before Finn interrupted.

Rey is so, so tired. The worst of the pain is still at a distance but it's creeping closer, and if nothing between them is going to change then she doesn't have time for this. “Maybe you should go,” she says, starting to turn away from him. But she can't quite bring herself to turn her back on him.

“I'm not leaving,” he announces as though the very idea is unthinkable. “Not when you're like this.”

“I'll be fine.” She knows what she's doing even if he doesn't realize it … trying to push him away before they get any closer, before it hurts just as badly as it did before, when their opposing allegiances tore them apart. Trying to push him away from her when all she really wants is for him to choose, against all odds, to stay.

“I'm staying,” he says, all obstinacy. “You need more than rest. Your wound still needs attention. If you won't call for a doctor, then you'll have to settle for me.”

Again he seems commanding, authoritative, and unfortunately that's because he's right. And still she tries to argue.

“You've done more than enough. You're the Supreme Leader, don't you have anything more important to do than treat your enemy's wounds?”

Sparks flash in his eyes and he opens his mouth and what comes out shocks both of them. “There is nothing more important than you.”

Heat rushes through Rey. She's lightheaded again but not from pain. Hectic spots of color burn in Ben's pale cheeks, and his mouth clamps shut and works in embarrassment, but he doesn't take the words back and he doesn't look away from her. She can feel the heat of his attention as if it's scorching her fragile skin, and she does not mind at all. It's like being warmed by the sun, after a long cold night. And she wants more of it.

She reaches up to touch his face, fingertips trembling, seeking out his stubbled jaw, the rough edge of the scar she gave him. His eyelashes flutter at the touch. Rey wants to savor the moment, to memorize the look on his face when she touched him so gently, so willingly …

… but pain shoots through her, and she cries out, her arm falling to her side.

Ben catches her at once, his arm going around her shoulders securely, protectively. Rey doesn't bother trying to protest that she's fine. If he wants to take care of her, then she'll be damned if she's going to stop him. His words echo around the inside of her mind … _there is nothing more important than you._ His actions over the past months would say otherwise, but she's willing to let him try and convince her by his actions now. She is going to keep him for as long as he'll stay, and to hell with the consequences. He can't hurt her any worse than she has already been hurt, and maybe … maybe this time, things will be different.

Maybe this time, as impossible as it seems, they will not be torn apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	4. treatment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pain is chased out, like shadows dispersed by light.

In the wake of Rey's near-collapse, Ben holds her against him as if she might slip out of his reach. His voice sounds half-frantic. “Rey, are you ...”

“I'm fine,” she mumbles. “It just hurts.”

He breathes out in relief, his breath ruffling through her hair. “Better that it hurts,” he says gruffly. “If there were no sensation I'd be more concerned.”

“You seem pretty concerned as it is,” Rey says dryly, more life in her voice than before.

Ben ignores the comment. “Do you have anything? For the pain?”

Regretfully, Rey shakes her head, and even that slight movement takes something out of her. “I don't suppose you have anything, where you are.”

He shakes his head, and she tilts her face back to look at him better, and sees he's shame-faced. He doesn't take proper care of his injuries, even though he's horrorstruck at her doing the same thing.

“I don't mind the pain,” she says, realizing as she says it that it's not a lie. It's not for the twisted reasons of before, when she tried to turn her pain into darkness and that darkness to her advantage … she isn't frightened like she was before. She isn't alone, and as long as she's not alone she thinks she can bear anything.

Ben doesn't look like he quite believes her, but there are more urgent matters at hand. “Do you have a dermal regenerator?”

“In the medkit … well I guess it's somewhere on the floor now ...”

Ben has the dermal regenerator in his hand in the time it takes for Rey to blink her eyes; she knows he must have called it to him with the Force. He guides her back down onto the thin mattress, which to her exhausted, battered body feels as soft and lovely as lying on a cloud. The cape falls to one side, and Rey curls slightly against the rumpled fabric, seeking the warmth it's absorbed from her body and the scent it carries from its owner. Ben's expression is one of studious concentration as he delicately peels the bacta patch away from the away from the wound. As gentle as he's being, as careful as he is, it still hurts. Rey winces, hissing in pain.

Ben murmurs a barely audible apology and rips the patch the rest of the way off, tossing it aside. The wound, now revealed, is larger than Rey remembers and uglier too … the bacta may have jump-started the healing process but the wet shine of it emphasizes the black and red of her burned skin, and the damage she herself caused: the hideous bruises spreading purple around the blaster wound, taking up almost her entire side. Looking at it, really taking in the extent of the damage for the first time and knowing how much of it she is responsible for, seems to make it hurt even worse. The pain from before tries to come rushing back, beginning to break over her in waves.

Pathetically, she's unable to keep a whimper from bursting from her lips, and Ben gazes down on her with alarm, reaches out with his free hand to touch the curve of Rey's face. She presses her cheek against his hand and oddly, it takes some of the pain away or at least distracts her from it, makes her still and calm enough for Ben to do what he needs to do. The dermal regenerator doesn't hurt; it feels almost like a tickling, and the wound goes numb after it. The healing will not be instantaneous, she knows that, but at least her skin will grow back, and her nerves won't suffer lasting damage. Probably. All of this she should have thought before, should have done for herself or – she has to admit now – let a doctor do for her. But she hadn't. And while she regrets her lapse, how far she was willing to go for a moment's illusory control, the darkness she listened to and let in … she can't regret it entirely. After all, it brought him to her.

Ben is conscientious and thorough, and it takes him a while to be satisfied with his handiwork. He treats Rey's wounds with a care and attention to detail she's sure he would never show to himself. Carefully he applies a fresh bacta patch to the burn, and turns his attention to the huge purple bruise conquering the territory of Rey's left side. There's no medical detachment in his gaze; every shattering emotion he feels at seeing her like this is laid bare across his face, and once more, Rey's ashamed.

The feeling makes her aware of her state of undress again, and she wants to hide, to wrap herself up the cape laying across her legs and disappear. Tears trickle silently down her cheeks and she doesn't bother to try and wipe them away.

Ben, kneeling at her bedside to minister to her, doesn't comment on her tears or draw attention to them. He looks at her for a moment of thought and then he bows his head – she feels the lush fall of his hair as it brushes across her bare stomach – and, very softly, presses his lips to her bruised flesh.

It's like the pain is swept away in the rush of warmth his kiss inspires in her. Chased out, like shadows dispersed by light.

“Ben ...” Rey breathes … when she can breathe.

Slowly he raises his head, eyes meeting hers with a flickering warmth in their dark depths. There is color in his cheeks, but he is unashamed.

“What … what was that for?” Rey asks, sweeping the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand, as bewildered as she is moved by the display of affection.

“To take the hurt away,” he explains, the color blooming brighter in his cheeks, spreading to his ears which peek out through his hair. “My … my mother taught me.” Sorrow passes over his face like an eclipse. “But it's just a superstition, I shouldn't have ...”

“Ben,” Rey interrupts, laying a hand on his arm. He quiets at once, watching her face. “It worked.”

He's astonished. She likes him astonished and smiles at the sight. It's not that the pain is entirely gone so much as there's something that matters more than the pain, that captures her attention and sparks her imagination so there's no room for anything else. Now that she knows she's not going to die, she can devote herself to what makes her feel alive.

“Ben,” she says softly. “I hurt other places too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;)


	5. ignited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her body sings a song of pain and healing, and her heart sings a song of love.

Ben bites his lower lip and looks down at her wide-eyed, as if misunderstanding or disbelieving her, but Rey is very serious, and she returns his gaze steadily until he believes, until he understands completely what she wants.

“Where?” he asks in a low voice.

“Here,” she says, raising her right elbow and pointing to it. She'd knocked it into something when she fell down earlier and it has been throbbing dully.

Ben leans forward and bumps a clumsy kiss against Rey's elbow; then he pulls back and waits patiently for further instructions.

“Here,” says Rey, her voice quiet but increasingly purposeful as she indicates her scraped knee, exposed by the fall of his cape in a way that seems almost indecent. Blushing furiously, Ben ducks his head and presses his lips to Rey's knee. This kiss lingers longer than the ones before it, a pleasant heat blooming and flowing outward from the place his lips touched. Rey feels revitalized, strengthened, soothed. She sighs, a sound of more contentment than she knew she was capable of.

When Ben raises his head, Rey is smiling at him. He looks like he's thinking about smiling back, but doesn't. There's light in his eyes, though, and it warms Rey through.

“Here,” she murmurs, indicating the scar on her upper arm, the one she sustained in their battle in Snoke's throne room, the one she has noticed is curiously shaped like two hands reaching toward each other, the one she has always kept covered because it reminds her so much of him. The scar doesn't hurt; she just wants him to kiss her more, and she wonders if he knows. She thinks, from the way his lips quirk ever so slightly upward, that he does.

He moves and touches her bare shoulder with his bare fingers and more heat moves languidly through her body like a healing force, and he leans over her and his lips caress her scar and the warmth just flows. His lips, his hands, the brush of his hair, soft over her skin … it's all more real and wonderful than she ever imagined.

Ben nudges his head against her shoulder after kissing her scar, a soft, seeking gesture, and when she turns her face toward him he touches his lips lightly to her temple, to the place where all those months ago Snoke had struck her with the hilt of her own lightsaber. There is no mark left there but Ben remembers, comforts her with a soft kiss.

Rey wonders, not for the first time, if things had been different … if she had stayed with him or he had come away with her … would he have kissed her that day? Would she have kissed him? But there's no sense in wondering about that, he's here with her _now_, and when she lets out a little hum and rolls her tired, beaten body slightly towards him, he brushes his lips across her cheek and winds up with a mouthful of her snarled, dirty hair. Rey giggles as Ben pulls back with a bemused expression, and laughing hurts, but it's a good kind of pain. It reminds her that she is alive and she is going to stay that way. It reminds her that the darkness that drove her to hurt herself was lying. She does have other choices. She does not have to carve the compassion out of herself. It doesn't make her weak, it makes her stronger. She can choose to love Ben, even when it hurts.

She laughs again, dizzy with joy at her own revelation, and this time she swears that Ben does smile. It's there and gone in an instant but she knows she saw it and it was real and was bright and was lovely and she wants to keep him around so she can see it again, bask in the glow of it. Her body sings a song of pain and healing, and her heart sings a song of love.

“Ben,” she says softly.

“Rey,” he answers, even more softly, and the sound of her own name ripples through her in a wave of meaning, of being. Of being seen, being known, being _wanted_.

“Don't stop,” she asks him, but there is no pleading in her voice. Even weakened, she's not going to beg for his affection; she wants only what he will offer freely, what he is willing to give.

From the look in his eyes, in that moment, he would give her anything. Everything.

_He tried to give me everything before, _she remembers with a dull pang. _And I couldn't take it, because it was wrong. It's still wrong. He's still wrong. But I love him. So where does that leave us, with these secret, stolen moments? _

She is drawn from her muddled thoughts by the shifting warmth of his body leaning over hers, and the sweet soft touch of his lips to her cheek. He kisses a slow trail across the side of her face, mashes a kiss to the shell of her ear. Everything about him is clumsy, awkward, artless, and she loves him all the more for it.

“You should be resting,” he tells her, voice husky in her ear, sending luscious shivers down the length of her spine.

“I'm fine,” she replies breathlessly. “I feel better than I have in months.” She turns her face meet his gaze, their noses bump together, they are a breath apart …

… and then his mouth is on her mouth and the world lights up, ignited in a rush of wonder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope i have pleased you with my humble offering


	6. luxury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are supposed to be together.

The kiss lasts only for a heartbeat but Rey swears time stands still enough for her to memorize the feel of it … first softness, stillness, then a quick push of Ben's lips against hers before he pulls back, retreats as if in horror at himself, hovers above her and doesn't move. At his current angle his face is half in shadow, half in light and she can't quite make out his expression, but she can feel what he is feeling, and his wonder and desire are equal to hers. They both want more.

She's still weak, but those kisses he's freckled her with have imbued her with enough strength to forge ahead in this endeavor. Slowly, with care, she reaches up and cradles the back of his head, threading shaky fingers through his hair, and brings him back down to her. This time she is the one kissing him, and it's just as lovely as that brief one before, but because she's initiated it there's a sudden heady rush of power in her veins, an electric feeling that's the exact opposite of the weakness she felt earlier.

A small noise escapes him as she lifts her head and pushes up against his lips with her own, seeking his warm response. Rey doesn't have a name for the noise Ben makes but she likes the sound of it and the way his mouth tickles at hers when he makes it. She kisses him repeatedly: short, light and curious at first, exploring, learning him. He kisses her back in a similar fashion, never asking for more than she's already giving even though he's clumsy and eager. To the girl who grew up on Jakku, alone, unloved … this extravagance of touch is the height of luxury.

Rey's fingers are still tangled in Ben's hair and he cups her face in both his hands, fingertips tender against her skin, and the two of them pause for a moment as if by mutual silent agreement, their gazes locked, breaths mingled.

“How … how do you feel now?” Ben asks, his voice hardly more than a whisper, his pupils blown wide.

Rey smiles up at him, curling her fingers through the soft hair at the back of his neck. He trembles at her touch but never takes his eyes off her. “Good … I feel really good.”

His eyes are warm with concern as he strokes the pad of his thumb against the softness of her cheek, the corner of her mouth. “The pain?”

“I've half-forgotten it.” She lapses into thoughtful quiet; Ben inclines his head to kiss the corner of her mouth, her cheek, her jaw, her throat … For a few moments Rey is lost in a daze of sensation, and then something compels her to speak.

“I wish that it could always be like this,” she murmurs. “That we could always be like this.”

He stops kissing her, as she'd been worried he would, and sits back on the edge of her bed, looking down at her with a melancholy expression only faintly lit with hope. “We could have,” he says. “If you'd joined me. If you'd accepted what I offered.” He says it with sorrow, not bitterness, and Rey's own sleeping sadness stirs in response to it.

“I couldn't,” she tells him softly. Finally they are having this conversation, months later than they should have. “You offered me something that wasn't yours to give, and wasn't mine to accept.”

He bites down on his lower lip, casts about the room with his gaze before it returns, inevitably, to settle on her. His jaw works, tense. “Without that throne I have nothing to offer you.” His heart breaks in his voice, and Rey's breaks a little bit too.

“That's not true.” She reaches up and touches his sad face, and he leans into her touch irresistibly, his eyelashes fluttering. “You never needed to offer me anything but yourself. All I wanted was you.” She pauses, watching her words hit him, shock passing across his face, his nostrils flare, his pupils dilate. As if, even after all that's passed between them today, everything he's done for her without even being asked, it's unthinkable that she could want Ben Solo for who he is. No galaxy in his hands, just her hand in his.

“I still want you,” she adds, and this causes him to tremble.

“Rey,” he says, but that's all that he seems capable of saying. Just her name, as he touches her cheek like he can't believe she's real.

“We're supposed to be together,” she says, the simple truth as she knows it to be, the reason she's been suffering so much every day without him.

He closes his eyes, nudging his cheek against her palm. “I know that,” he says softly.

Eagerness makes Rey want to lunge forward, demand that he stay with her … but over-eagerness and single-mindedness had blinded her to the nuances of their situation before. She will not make that mistake again. The injury she sustained today has actually done some good, has forced her to slow down and consider all her words and actions more carefully, more thoughtfully.

In the quiet between them, she is aware of everything: his longing for her, yearning for closeness, wishing he could come home. But she's also keenly aware of his hurts, both old and new, and the shame that's been driven into him so deep it keeps him pinned. Kylo Ren is the same person as Ben Solo, and if Rey wants him – and she does – then she will need to find a way to speak to all of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> communication is key


	7. issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You know I can't join you."

She lays a hand on his arm, feeling the muscles bunched with tension beneath the black cloth; at her touch, he relaxes, looking down into her eyes, irresistibly attentive.

“Do you want to know why I got hurt?” she asks him.

Ben's expression, already sober, wrenches with guilt. “You told me. You were shot in battle.”

“That's true, but it's not all the truth. It's how, not why.” Rey sighs, feels a twinge of renewed pain in her side, ignores it. “It didn't happen because I was surprised, or caught off guard. I sensed the bolt coming; I ought to have been able to block it. I tried to block it, but I … I couldn't.” She swallows, her throat feeling sore from all the talking, but there's more to say. “It's not the first time something like this has happened.”

There it is, the truth she was too frightened and ashamed to reveal to her closest friends, now laid bare to her dearest enemy, the Supreme Leader of the First Order. And what will he do with it?

A look of blank surprise flashes across his features before comprehension dawns, his brows pulling together in a deeply troubled expression. “You … you've been having issues using the Force.”

“Yes,” she says miserably, her fingers picking at his sleeve in a nervous gesture.

He lays his hand over hers, thumb stroking over the back of her knuckles, stilling her restless motions. “I thought it was just me,” he mutters.

Rey's heart does an odd twist of mixed-up alarm and relief. “You, too?”

His lips – still red from her kisses – press together and he nods.

They are quiet together for a moment, letting it sink in. Ben keeps idly stroking Rey's hand as though it's so natural, like it's something they do all the time.

“Do you think ...” he starts to ask, just as Rey says “Is it because ...” Their words collide and overlap, tripping over each other.

“You first,” says Ben, with another pass of his fingertips over the back of her hand.

It's hard to organize her thoughts with her skin tingling, but Rey manages. “Is it because of what happened in the throne room? Because we're not together?”

“That's what I'm wondering, too.” He looks down at her with serious eyes, a question kindling in them and Rey has to stop him from asking it, for both their sakes. She reaches up to cradle the side of his face again, and he leans into her hand, closing his eyes.

“You know I can't join you.”

He sighs, opens his eyes to look at her mournfully. “ I know.”

Rey feels, senses the moment is not yet right for her to make him an offer of her own, so she just smooths her hand over his scarred cheek, once and again.

“I think it is,” she says softly, “I think it is because of that. The Force brought us together; it doesn't want us apart. When we fought together, side by side … Ben, nothing ever felt so right to me, before or since. Until just now, being here with you.” Her voice shakes.

Ben turns his head to kiss the palm of her hand, never taking his eyes off her. He doesn't have to say a word for her to know he feels the same. The question is, what are they going to do about it? She wants to ask directly, to force an answer, a commitment, a promise, anything. But she bites her tongue because no, she doesn't want to force anything. She wants only what he willingly, gladly chooses to give. She had not begged him for help today; he had aided her because he wanted to. She will not beg him to choose her, to stay with her now. She will only tell him all the truth, and let him make his own choices as to what to do with it. Even if it hurts her. She is accustomed, after all, to pain, even if she does not relish it.

“There's something else,” Rey says, afraid to speak of it but knowing she must, and it's all right, she tells herself, _I'm not alone._ Ben seeks and holds her gaze with his.

“It's something I've sensed,” Rey explains. “Something growing. A … a darkness. At first I thought … at first I thought it was you. But it's nothing like you. It's like nothing I've ever felt … the closest was Snoke, but it's more than he was, worse, older, more powerful. I don't know what it is or where it's coming from but I'm afraid … I'm afraid of what it means, what it might do. I can't influence it, but I think it can influence me. I think … I think it's part of the reason I did what I did to myself today.”

Ben draws in a hissing breath, a sound of anger and fear. Horror scrawls across his expressive face and it makes Rey want to kiss him again because it means he understands. His gaze travels to her side, though she's covered by his cape, and the horror fades to a resigned grief tinged with guilt. His hair falls in his face, and he looks tired.

“I've felt it too,” he admits.

Rey's fear and dread seem swept away in a wash of relief. Once again, thanks to Ben Solo, she is not alone with the gnawing emptiness and encroaching darkness. _I'm not alone, and neither is he_.

“Do you know what it is?” she asks him, after a moment's pause.

He shakes his head. “No … only that it's powerful, as you said. And darker than anything I've felt before.”

“It calls to you, doesn't it? Like it calls to me. It wants our attention. It wants _us_.”

“It can't have us,” Ben says with a sudden fierceness, almost a growl. “I'm done. No more masters.” He turns luminous eyes on her; fixed in his gaze for a moment she forgets how to breathe. “Yours is the only call I'll answer,” he continues, voice dropping low again. “You and your light.”

She wonders if he's said more than he meant, but a breathless look deep into his eyes and Rey knows this is what Ben meant to say. It's taken him a lifetime of struggle and pain but he's finally saying it, finally letting himself be heard.

“It's your light too, Ben,” she reminds him, softly, when it doesn't appear that he's going to speak again.

“I know,” he says, just as softly. Rey's heart leaps to the words and she twines her fingers through his, needing to be closer. Ben's throat works as he looks at their joined hands and he speaks again, with difficulty and with purpose.

“Being without you … I've never felt so weak. I know it's what I deserve, but you've been weakened too, and you don't deserve to suffer for my mistakes.” His face twists, his voice crackling with pain. “You shouldn't have had to get shot and start beating your own wounds for us to see each other again. The darkness that did this to you, that talked you into this … I want nothing to do with it. No, that's not true. I want to destroy it.” Storm clouds gather in his eyes, a powerful energy filling the air between them. “I hate everything that hurts you. I hate myself most of all.” He hangs his head, simmering with shame, and Rey's thudding heart goes out to him. Letting go of his hand and reaching up to touch his cheek, she finds it streaked wet with tears.

“Ben,” she murmurs. “Please, don't. You've hated yourself all your life, haven't you? And it's never made you stronger. All it's done is make you believe you deserve to be hurt, and you don't. It hurts you, and it hurts me … like seeing me hurting myself today caused you pain. Didn't it?”

Wordlessly he nods.

Rey whispers, “It hurts me to know you hate what I love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	8. promises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She will not apologize for her love. One day, neither will he.

She hadn't meant to make a startling confession, hadn't set out to shake the stars. She had only said the raw truth as she knows it, as she feels it, to make him understand. She loves him.

Ben gasps, a ragged but tiny sound, like a small wound. Lips parted, he lifts shocked eyes to hers. He looks like she has taken his whole galaxy, broken it open, shaken it and set everything back upside down. He looks, she thinks curiously, a lot like he had looked when she claimed the lightsaber on Starkiller Base as the planet fell apart beneath their feet. How she had hated him then, and how strange it is to think about now. He's become so impossibly dear to her in so short a time, and despite so long an absence from her life. Even in that absence, he was a part of her, and she, a part of him.

“What did you say?” His voice is ragged too, but edged with golden hope. Like he can't quite believe her yet but _oh_, how he wants to.

“I said,” Rey repeats, more direct, to the point, “that I love you, Ben.”

It's like with the word _love_ spoken, spoken aloud to him for the first time in years, the last of Ben's resistance to the light crumbles … and he crumbles with it, slumping onto his knees at Rey's bedside, his hands clutching needy at her legs, his face hidden in her black-swathed lap, his whole broad-shouldered body shaking.

Wordlessly Rey pats Ben's hair, like calming an animal, and he curls tighter against her, seeking out the comfort she willingly gives. When he finally lifts his head again, his face is tear-streaked and shimmering, and he blinks at her like a man seeing the sun for the first time in a long, long time.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers, voice breaking. “Sorry, sorry ...” It's not clear if he's apologizing for crying, or apologizing for everything he's ever done wrong, or apologizing to her that she has to love him. She thinks it's probably a combination of all these things.

“Shh.” Rey curls her fingers through his tumbled hair and smiles at him. She feels drowsy now, the events of the day catching up with her tired body as it tries to heal itself, but she's not yet ready to let go of him and slip into sleep. Taking his face in her hands, she guides him up to her, brings his face close to hers, and places her lips to his neck, to the line of the scar snaking its way down into his shirt. He half-sobs, half-moans as she kisses higher, working her way slow and tenderly up his neck to his jaw, kissing his cheek, tasting the salt of his tears on her lips, following the path of the scar where it leads. She kisses his eyelid, his forehead, and rests her forehead against his. They rest and cling together, two ships driven close in an ion storm. He murmurs something, so soft it's more a feeling of his breath against her face than words, but he says it again so she can hear as well as feel it.

“I love you, Rey.” He confesses it like a great secret, like a deep and grievous sin, because he is still unlearning the lessons taught to him by the dark side that love is a weakness. Rey understands this just as she understands that her orphan heart thrills and dances to words of love as her body does to the scent of fresh meat. She will not apologize anymore for her hunger. She will not apologize for her love. One day, neither will he.

He's not crying anymore, but there is a sheen of tears in his eyes that don't fall. His lips tremble as he regards her, and his hands clutch carefully at hers, holding her like she is a precious thing.

_I am, _Rey realizes, _a precious thing. _

“Rey ...” Ben says softly, squeezing her steady hands with his trembling ones. “I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for everything I've done ...”

She bestows a smile on him, lifting his hands to her lips and kissing his knuckles. “We can still fix it.”

He nods, and his expression goes distant as he pulls away inside of himself, considering a problem she can't see, struggling for a solution that doesn't come. Rey frees one of her hands and touches Ben's chin, turning his face back to her, locking her eyes with his. His divided attention once more coalesces, centering on only her, the star around which he now orbits.

“We need each other,” Rey tells him softly. “We can't either of us do this alone, and we were never meant to. When it's time to face this darkness, I want you at my side.”

Ben shivers and sighs and brings his mouth close to hers, nose nudging at her cheek. “You have me,” he replies. Vows. “I won't fail you again, Rey.” He kisses her, tentative at first but Rey kisses back with surety and strength, parts his lips with hers, savoring the feel and taste of him, losing herself in the sweep of hungry heat.

She whimpers into his mouth, her body crying out, caught in a struggle between what she wants and what she needs. Ben draws back reluctantly, lips startlingly red from Rey's kisses, and touches the side of her face with reverent fingertips.

“Rey,” he says, and pleasure rolls through her again at the sound of her name shaped by his lips. “You should sleep.”

Rey sighs, slumping back against her pillows and grimacing at the discomfort the movement causes her. She had the uneasy sense that she can feel her body slowly knitting itself back together. “I know,” she says, “but I wish I didn't have to. I want to keep kissing you.” Her vision is starting to blur again from sheer exhaustion, but to her delight, she sees him blush.

“Would it help,” he says quietly, “if I promise you more kissing when you wake up?”

“It might,” Rey admits, smiling faintly.

“Then I promise.”

Rey's eyes flutter shut; her eyelids feel so heavy she can't keep them open anymore. “Will you stay?” she asks him sleepily, every word a chore.

“For as long as I can.” He lays the lightest of kisses upon her lips, feathers her cheeks and forehead with more. “If I do get taken away, I'll come back as soon as I can.”

Part of Rey's weary mind is suddenly alarmed, aware that they've made no plans, only promises, and what if something goes wrong? But the alarm is too strong an emotion for her drained body to sustain and it lapses and leaves her more tired than before, only barely able to articulate her fears, in the simplest of terms.

“I don't want … to lose you again,” Rey mumbles, exhausted and on the brink of sleep and utterly unguarded.

Ben draws in a quick breath. “You won't,” he tells her in a deep and certain tone. “There's no way in hell I'm letting anything come between us again.”

She feels so warmed by his words, so assured, so safe. The dull kick of pain in her side is meaningless, easy to ignore. With her hand in Ben's, Rey falls into the richest, most luxurious sleep she has ever known.

**Author's Note:**

> "don't start another WIP" she said to herself and then she started another WIP  
... oops ...


End file.
